Methods and Results of Indo-Mexican Studies

Thomas S. Barthel Methods and Results of Indo-Mexican Studies A Preliminary Report Lxis manuscritos pictográficos del grupo Borgia co- rresponden a una religion sincretista que denota nexos con el AsiaSuroriental. Con antiguos medios mexicanos de expresión se han integrado y traspasado conceptos hin- duistas. El análisis de los regentes de los veinte signos del día del Códice Borgia 9-13 lleva al descubrimiento de dos sistemas politeistas parciales regidos por Visnu, respectivamente por áiva, que fueron transpuestos a Quetzalcouatl, respectivamente aTezcatlipoca. Se ofre- ce un conjunto detallado de tales equivalencias transpací- ficas de deidades asf como un bosquejo del marco gene- ral desemejantes relaciones indo-mexicanas. Research of Transpacific influences on Mesoamerican cultures centers on four time-levels. The two earlier ones (1000 B.C. Olmecs; 300 B.C. Monte Alban 1 to 300 A.D. Teotihuacan II) are connected with possible diffusion from East Asia and will not be discussed here. Contrary to the exploration of "Sino- Mexican" cultural relationships a study of the two later Transpacific waves of diffusion is in a more favourable position, given the wealth of sources and the suitability for comparisons with donor-cultures in Asia. We are dealing with two focuses, where clusters of parallels with the Old World can be found. In the later Middle Classic syncretistic forms do appear at Palenque and throughout an area under its influence. "Focus A" - as discovered and des- cribed first by Ekholm (1953)-promises to gain sharper contours and greater depth in the course of increasing decipherment of Maya glyphs but it seems to me premature to discuss such progress at this moment. The subject of my 13 preliminary report will be, rather, the latest stratum of Transpacific influences discernible in pre-Columbian Mesoamericathat is to say the religious system detectable in the codices of the Borgia-group. I refer to the program deposited in those codices as "Focus B" , to be dated in early Post Classic (about 1000 A.D.?). "Focus A" and "Focus B" can be understood as specific syncretisms which resulted from stimuli from Greater India upon receptive cultures in Meso- america south or north of the isthmus. While one can not yet be sure whether new ideas stemming from Palenque passed beyond the Maya region, the new creed dubbed by me "The Borgia Program" appears to have diffused across ethnic boundaries on the Mixteca-Puebla horizon. The consequences of "Focus B" can be studied up to the time of the Spanish conquest, though in a modified and re-mexicanized manner. Therefore, a re-evaluation of Aztec religion might come from this fresh perspective. "Focus A" and "Focus B" are the subject of a special discipline just emerging for which 1 have suggested the designation " Indo-Mexican Studies" . The field for investigation in Indo-Mexican Studies comprises all the syncretistic man- ifestations in Mesoamerica which have received and transformed traits from South Asia and South-East Asia, above all influences from Hinduism. Indo- Mexican Studies analyzes archaeological and pictorial evidence, iconographic and epigraphic information by using the standard methods of Mesoamerican Studies as well as by paying attention to and using knowledge of cultural and religious phenomena in the presumed donor-regions on the other side of the Pacific. For the time-period of the first millennium after Christ the Asiat- ic area under comparison is delimited by India, Western Indonesia and Indo- china (as well as the area influenced by Buddhism, like Burma, Tibet and Ceylon on the one hand and the Hellenistic and Late Classical cultures to the west of Indiaon the other hand). It goes without saying that the closest cooper- ation with traditional Indology and its specialized branches and neighbouring disciplines must be striven for. Those who work in Indo-Mexican Studies or- dinarily start with a competence in one area of Transpacific connections only, but must make themselves competent in the opposing area. In the same way as research on syncretistic phenomena in Late Classical time required simul- taneously a command of the most important languages of that time and area, in the future a qualified specialist for Indo-Mexican Studies will have to make himself sufficiently conversant writh Sanskrit as well as with Nahua and Maya. Indo-Mexican Studies suffers from an imbalance that can not be avoided. The profusion of published and unpublished sources in Greater India contrasts with a dearth of documents from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.These disparities in number (resulting from the destruction or loss of almost all of the pre- Columbian libraries leaving only a handful of codices) are furthermore aggra- vated by the differences of ancoding techniques. Whereas the donor-cultures in Greater India used a developed full-writing system for encoding their texts and thus were able to fix permanently the archaic language of Sanskrit, the receiving cultures in Mesoamerica had at their disposal merely notational sys- 14 terns falling far behind. Partial writing systems necessarily are very imperfect for recording language; providing mostly a series of catch-words, they required contemporary oral commentaries and explanations. Those components of the tradition have been lost irretrievably and can not be compensated for by a modern scholar using risky conclusions of analogy. A further difficulty for Indo-Mexican Studies in the comparison of inter- continental styles must be mentioned. Both Greater India and Mesoamerica for their religious art made use of exact iconographic rules within the traditional frame work utilized by the appointed artisans . A mere visual comparison brings out in most cases restricted motif-linkages only and furthermore is burdened down with subjective views .The limits of such comparisons have become evident for instance in the studies of the late Heine-Geldern. The recognition of more or less identical information clothed in utterly different historical costumes needs analytical methods of novel capacity for probing new depths. Indo- Mexican Studies gains additional potential for understanding by including lit- erary sources from Greater India for comparative use. As opposed to the con- ventional methodof comparing form with form visually, wenowenquire whether textual information of the donor-culture has been transformed into pictorial information of the receiving culture. Our new method principally reckons with a change of the media, in accordance with the different niveaus of writing- systems in Asia and Ancient America respectively. One has to take into account that Transpacific contacts did not produce any mass immigrations which would have caused strong changes in the field of artisans as well as a spread of Asiatic languages or writing-systems as it happened so often in Hinduized South-East Asia. An implantation of a new religious pattern caused by a small number of contact-bearers (presumably of high standing at Mesoamerican courts) could only be successful by taking up and remodelling traditions and styles already existent in Mesoamerica in order to have as far as possible native media for the spread of the "new creed" . Indo-Mexican Studies reckons with "new wine inoldbottles" and with a strong tendency towards formal adaptations. Possi- bly the roleof single brahmans and their pupils in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica can be compared to the techniques of infiltration used by the Jesuits in the Chinaofthe 16thand 17th century, when the missionaries tried to adapt themselves as far as possible to Chinese culture and philosophy. Traditional Mexican Studies has analyzed the syncretistic documents of "Fo- cus B" , that is the codices of the Borgia group, in one way only. Ever since the days of Seler their contents was defined by direct comparison with Aztec religion and calendrics of the 16th century. This is not wrong but it yields only half of the truth. Indo-Mexican Studies presents as a supplementary hypothesis that a religious pattern imported from Greater India served as an original program for a specific priestly school. First suspicions are raised by observing peculiarities completely isolated in Mesoamerica but wellknown among the supposed Transpacific donor-cultures. We are dealing both with series of a calendrical nature and assemblages of an iconographic nature. Two examples may help to illustrate this: 15 a) Codex Laud 24-17 is a calendrical chapter with a length of 35 days, but such a cycle has no parallels in Mesoamerica. The pattern of pictorial sections shows that sets of five days aresegmented, thus revealing that the entire chapter was built up out of seven parts . Transpacific working-hypothesis recognizes in such patterning wellknown properties of the Javan-Balinese calendar. There the so-called tumpak-cycle comprises 35 days combining a five-day week (panchawara) with a seven-day week (saptawara) and functions as an astro- logical almanac. Those who work in Indo-Mexican Studies now explore the background of Hinduized Western Indonesia to find additional parallels, for instance planetary rulers of the seven-day week. Above all, the planetary working-hypothesis produces intriguing results for a deeper understanding of certain other series in Mesoamerica. b) Codex Laud 9 presents a cluster of icons quite isolated within Meso- america but easy to connect with Chinese cosmography. "Turtle with Snake" corresponds to the Chinese animals ruling the northern quarter of the world; "female deity, rabbit and intoxicating drunk" refer to the Chinese mother- goddess and the lunar hare who prepares the life-elixir. Even the weapons in Laud 9 find their explanation in a Chinese concept because "Turtle with Snake" as rulers of the northern stellar quadrant was designated "Black Warrior" . A further investigation of this chapter makes clear that other icons can be explained as being derived from Indian tradition. Those who work in Indo- Mexican Studies therefore begin to suspect that a donor-culture for Trans- pacific influences was located in an area where Chinese and Indian cultures overlap - and that was Indochina.

Load more